If God was a mother she’d be taking today off.

She would take her morning in a garden. She’d find fallen blossoms, throw them in the air by the handful, and walk through them. She would go down to the river and take her shoes off and wade at the edge. Her feet lightly sinking in the silt on each step. She’d spend time with beetles and fish and wonder at them, delighted. She would walk in the cool of the evening.

If God was a mother she’d look for the dissident daughters of the earth. She’d know where to find them and join them throwing shells into the surf, or standing in circles under trees, or marching for non-violence and freedom, or knitting.

If God was a mother she’d call us out of our buildings, our basements, our bunkers. She would interrupt our meetings, our seminars, our conferences and lead us all down to the lake. And we’d play. And we would all ask her to watch as we jumped off the pier into the cool water. And she would laugh, and this would just encourage our splashing.

(Debscape) To my wife who teaches me about Mother God

When God is a mother we’ll do all this and find our love and respect.

When God is a mother we’ll throw away our guns, unlock our doors and open the windows.

Mother God has called for centuries. She waits for us to hear. Hoping at last we’ve spent all our juvenile jealousy, our adolescent energy for conflict, and are finally ready for the play of true adulthood.

Mother God will go on waiting and watching. She’s not one to give up on us. She’s a mom.

Technorati Tags: Mother’s Day, Mother God, Peace, Spirituality

I was nine years old. It was Sports Day in Springside Saskatchewan. Everyone in the known universe was there. I had six dimes in my Red Tag jeans–money my mother had given me to spend at my wild discretion. My favorite food group, Fudgsicles, were a convenient 10 cents.

I was savoring my first of the day when I noticed I was being watched. A boy, younger than me, bare feet, bad clothes, his body a smudge, his small face turned to me.

I walked over and gave him one of my dimes. He bought a Fudgsicle and came back and stood beside me. I gave him the rest of my dimes.

And we stood together behind the chicken-wire fence watching a ball game. Me, elated and no clue why without money to buy Fudgsicles. Him, grinning and dripping chocolate.

I know this kind of experience is not unique to me. I believe these small epiphanies are given to us as signs of what it is to be truly human.

I also know that I have betrayed this experience and its meaning a thousand times. I didn’t have to practice being self-absorbed, or secretly competitive, or discriminatory–that I picked up mimetically, naturally.

But our epiphanies, what ever they are, how ever small or subtle, are signs. They are our GPS’s giving us our life coordinates, leading us out of a self-referential slavery and into community.

Technorati Tags: Epiphanies, Springside Saskatchewan, Fudgsicles, GPS, Peace, Spirituality